In his examination of the bishopric of Orvieto from 1100 to 1250, David Foote reveals how three defining developments of the Middle Ages - the feudal revolution, ecclesiastical reform, and state building - played out in a typical medieval Italian commune. He challenges scholarship that overemphasizes the secular nature of Italian city-states by showing the extent to which developments in ecclesiastical institutions provided a model for the formation of civic institutions and defined a commune's political and religious culture. Following the collapse of Carolingian authority in the tenth...

In his examination of the bishopric of Orvieto from 1100 to 1250, David Foote reveals how three defining developments of the Middle Ages - the feudal revolution, ecclesiastical reform, and state building - played out in a typical medieval Italian commune. He challenges scholarship that overemphasizes the secular nature of Italian city-states by showing the extent to which developments in ecclesiastical institutions provided a model for the formation of civic institutions and defined a commune's political and religious culture. Following the collapse of Carolingian authority in the tenth...

The journals of Dr. Wendell Wellington Wiggins might just be the most extraordinary contribution to the study of the earth's past since the discovery of the Rosetta Stone. In the incredible pages of these thought-to-be-lost diaries, Dr. Wiggins whom we now must consider the greatest paleozoologist of all time has divulged the secrets of the truly ancient animal world: a world before human beings; a world before dinosaurs; a world that, until now, existed well beyond the outer reaches of human imagination. From deadly Amazonian Whispering Vines (Vitus Sussurus) to curious creatures called...